Warhammer 40k Grey Knight Terminators

Perhaps a stupid question,but it's not clear to me anymore at this point: is this going to be a costume or a statue/sculpture?
 
Perhaps a stupid question,but it's not clear to me anymore at this point: is this going to be a costume or a statue/sculpture?

Not a stupid question. It'll be a costume. But it'll be a huge, heavy, and ponderous thing to wear, so it'll mostly spend it's days in statue mode.

Progress continues on the chest sculpt:


The final thing was to add the recesses where the vents will be cut out of the back:

This is just a couple of layers of Sintra glued onto the flat section of the rear.

At this point, the shapes are mostly where I want them. It's just a matter of making it all smooth and shiny:


In other news, I've decided to build the hands and forearms digitally. I'm short on time for hand sculpting, and the robots are just sitting around doing nothing. So here's the elbow pad parts all carved out:


And this is what it looked like after assembly:


Finally, here's the model for the toe covered in gelcoat:


And here it is being fiberglassed:


The thigh parts are getting skinned over right now. Soon they'll be smooth and ready for molding too. Then all that's left is sculpting the pelvis, carving the rest of the hand and arm parts, and adding all of the little details.

Stay tuned.
 
It's not too early to start thinking about all of the little added details this build will need. With that in mind, I designed a bunch of purity seals in Photoshop and sent the file off to be printed onto cotton fabric at Spoonflower.com. Here's the result:


Here's a closeup of a couple of them:


And another one of my favorites:


In other news, I have both toes out of the mold:

That's them there at the bottom.

The hip plates are almost ready to mold. They were made of styrene, sintra, and some scrap MDF I had sitting around:










I still have to add the sides and clean up the seams, but they give the right idea:


I've also been a bit worried that the thing might be getting too big to wear. I felt better after wearing the stilts next to it:


It's all still kinda huge though:


Finally, I've got the forearm all carved and assembled:


It's big:


But it might not be quite big enough next to the rest of the big parts:


Stay tuned.

 
Okay. Here's the 3D printed finger parts:

I'm worried they might be a bit small.

Here's the chest all shiny and ready for wet-sanding and waxing:


To prep the chest for molding, Freddy and I spent some quality time wet sanding it down to 600 grit. Then just about everyone in the shop spent at least a few minutes waxing and buffing the surface. Here's Chuck waxing part of it:


Her little sister helped for a few minutes:


Even Lewis got in on the action:


We're currently in the process of making what will end up being a five part mold for that piece. More pics of that soon.

In other news, I finished up the little hip plates. I started by doing some filling and sanding at the seams:


They came out okay:


They ended the evening shiny and pink:


They'll be molded at the same time as the chest and thighs.

Finally, here's the stack of laser cut lettering that will end up being applied to every square inch of the finished armor:


More to come. Stay tuned...
 
Molding has begun on the last of the large parts:


In this lineup you can see the thighs, the chest, the upper waist, and the hip plates:


I still have some sculpting to do on the pelvis. Then I'll be able to start wear testing this monster.

In other news, I've sculpted, molded, and cast a crux terminatus pendant to hang off of the belt:


The second casting came out a lot better:


I also molded these little trim pieces for the shins:


In order to make them fit the curved surface, I cast them in urethane resin:


Then, as soon as it stopped being liquid and just before the resin had hardened completely, I demolded the parts and taped them down onto the curved surface:


This way the parts will cure to full hardness with a curve that will fit onto their final place on the shin. Then it's just a matter of gluing them in place and filling the seam around their edges.

Aside from that, I've fiberglassed some plywood soles into the boots:


Next I'll be bolting the stilts into them and taking them for a walk.

Stay tuned.
 
Molding continues on the chest and thigh parts:


Here's Freddy building up clay walls for the parting line on the next section of the chest mold:


Here I am working on the backside of one of the thigh molds:


If all goes according to plan, I'll have the thigh molds completely laid up today and the last of the chest mold laid up tomorrow.

The molds for the little thigh plates are all cleaned up and waiting for me to make parts too:


I've decided that I made the forearm too small. So I resized the digital model and started carving out new parts. Here's the two hand parts with the original finger pieces:


I've also started printing out bigger versions of the fingers as well.

Here's the slices of the new elbow pad:


I should have that glued up today, so I can snap a side by side picture with the original smaller one.

While all of that's going on, I've got Chuck doing some minor cleanup on the parts that are already out of the molds:


The boots are all assembled too. I just need to install the stilts:


So there's much progress in progress. Stay tuned.
 
Holy:eek:eek:eek:eek!!!!! I think the word "big" doesn't apply to your build anymore...let's see, how about "Behemothy"?

I've always though "gargantuan" had a nice ring to it.

Dear lord, man. Please tell me that Games Workshop is footing the bill for all the materials you're going through!

Games Workshop is not involved in this build in any way. This is my own personal project.

UPDATE:

Here's a few more words about the test-fitting pictured in my last post. I've been a bit worried that this thing is going to quickly become too massive for an average person to wear. In order to make myself feel better about it, I decided to put Chuck in the parts I had out of the molds:

She's a 5'2" high school girl who helps me out after class a couple of days a week. I figure if she can get around in this rig, anybody else I'd put in it should be fine.

We started by strapping her into the inner waist and thighs:


After that, I had her step up onto a bucket so she could get into the stilts:


Note the duct tape which will approximate the locations of the straps that will hold the finished version together.

The shin was suspended from the stilt:


The plan is to rig it a bit more permanently to the ankle area of the boot and then link it to the stilt so it'll stay parallel to the wearer's shin regardless of the orientation of the leg. That'll make more sense once the build progresses.

In any case, she was able to take a few steps in my cluttered workshop without breaking anything or herself:


The biggest problem turned out not to be the weight or the bulk of the armor parts. Mostly it's just the fact that Chuck isn't as comfortable on the stilts as I am:


In other news, I demolded the fiberglass copy of the chest:


It was very exciting:


The first thing I did with it was one of those things I almost never remember to do. I weighed it:


The raw, untrimmed pull for the whole chest weighs a little under 8 pounds:


Of course, the first thing I had to do after rough trimming the whole thing was to try it on:


Then I had a friend hold the shoulders in place so I could see how it looked:


Definitely headed toward gargantuan.
 
Not much progress to report, but I did get a few minutes to work on this beast last week. Namely, I molded the elbow and forearm parts.

Here's the forearm mold in progress:




I didn't get any photos of the elbow mold in progress, but it's a bit less interesting.

I've since removed the prototypes from the molds:


Now the molds are all trimmed and polished and prepped for layup and I'll be off and away for a little bit before I get a chance to make the first actual copy of either part.
 
I'm back in the shop this week and I've pulled the forearm and elbow parts out of the molds:


The elbows will end up pinned in place on the top of the forearms to act as a sort of hinge. For now, I've just got them held in place with a couple of spring clamps:


Much like the rest of this build, they're huge:


But I think this new, bigger version is just about right:


Now I just need to finish sculpts for the pelvis, upper arm, and hands.

So it's moving right along.
 
The time has come to attach the shoulders to the chest armor.

I started by cutting a couple of pieces of plywood like so:


Then I fiberglassed them in place and added a few screws to keep everything snug while it cured:


The armpit area got the same treatment:


Screwing those in place was a bit harder, so I used some wood scraps to help keep everything in place temporarily:




Once the glass was cured, I installed a lazy susan bearing on either side of the chest:




Then I cut matching holes into the inside faces of the shoulders:




The shoulders were then bolted to the inner section of the lazy susan bearing:




Now it looks about like so:


Here's my shop assistant Chuck trying the chest and shoulders on for size:


She's about 5'3" tall, but I think it looks just about right:


Now I just need to sculpt the pelvis and upper arm, mold them, and build the harness that will support the whole thing. In the meantime, we're prepping the pieces we have for paint:


Stay tuned...
 
So at this point, there are two big armor parts left to sculpt and mold. The upper arm, which should be easy to sculpt, and the pelvis, which is an ungodly nightmare of funny little compound curves and complex shapes.

I've started with the pelvis. Like all of the big parts, it began as a rough shaped carved out of foam:


After sanding the foam as smooth as I could, the whole thing was skinned over with Bondo:


Here it is with the thighs and the waist armor for a quick glimpse of what's to come:


The smoothing process is well under way now:


Here it is with the hip plates and a belt buckle mockup:


Aside from that, I've just been doing a lot of sanding and filling on the other parts of the armor:


This is basically how I spend all of my time:


I'm really needing to finish this beast up now, so hopefully it'll start to take shape pretty quickly.
 
There's been a lot of progress lately and I'm overdue for an update. First off, I've finished sculpting the pelvis:

Once it was smoothed out and polished, it was time to mold. I started with the front section:

Here it is somewhere in the middle of the process:

The mold ended up being five parts: front, back, left, right, and top. Here's the mold nearly complete:

Once the last section had cured, I pried them all apart:

Then I got to polishing the insides:

The polished mold sections were coated with mold release and then bolted back together:

Laying up the part went pretty quick. Here I am pulling the mold apart:

Once I had it out of the mold, I had to try the pelvis on:

It still needed some trimming, but it looked good:

Stacked up with the waist and chest, it looked good too:


Along the way somewhere, I attached the toe to the rest of the boot with a hinge:

They're shaping up nicely:


Meanwhile, I've been finished and basecoating a lot of the parts. Here's the thighs:

And the forearms:

The calf parts are a ways behind:

I've still got a lot of work to do on the chest. I've started some of the tiny detailing:

I'm almost ready to paint the shoulders too:

On the shoulders, there's all of the lettering to deal with. A while back I had all of the letters cut in thin styrene on a laser cutter:

To prep for paint, they were sanded lightly before removing the waste plastic:

Tape was applied to the backside to keep everything neat and in order when the letters were placed on a piece of cardboard:

Once they were all taped to the cardboard, I sprayed on a couple coats of primer:

After that dried, I sprayed on the gold:


So here's where everything sits now:


Soon...
 
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Today I sculpted the shape for the rubber knee parts:


It came out okay:


I also made the prototype for this little hinge detail that will be repeated a few times on the armor. Here it is at the top of the shoulder:


Later in primer:


Then in gloss with a couple of purity seals:


I can't really do any more painting until I have the hinge details cast. But I couldn't resist the urge to put just a bit of silver on this detail on the shoulder:


I also had an assistant vacform some parts:



More on that later.
 
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